The present invention relates to an inspection apparatus for inspecting substrates on which circuit patterns of a semiconductor device or liquid crystal are formed, and in particular to an art of setting the inspection conditions for inspecting the patterns on the substrate being processed.
A prior optical pattern inspecting apparatus is disclosed for example in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication (JP-A) No. Hei 5-258703, while an electronic beam pattern inspecting apparatus is described in JP-A No. Hei 11-160247. Based on these inspecting apparatuses, a system for determining the fatality of defects by classifying defective images (partial images of the areas determined to be defective at the time of inspection) is described in the Japanese Patent Application No. 3132565, a system for storing the images obtained at the time of inspection and determining inspection conditions based on the stored images is described in the JP-A No. 2000-193944, and a system of determining the classification conditions by transferring the defect images to external devices for analysis is described in the Japanese Translation of Unexamined PCT Appln. No. 2003-515942.
And the procedure of setting an inspection recipe is described in the JP-A Nos. 2000-161932, 2003-6614, 2003-21605 and 2003-106829.